Archikulture Digest
Number 6: Fringe 2000
Art! Art! We're done with art! The purple-hair set blows in like the smoke from Lake County, and it's out with High Class, in with High Concept. The Bohos of Fringe Fest have driven out the Hobos of downtown, and now it's even safe to walk on West Church Street after midnight. Just don't push it.
Inspector Jipp and the Club of Castrated Men
By Byron Orlock
Shangrlia Theater
Orlando Fringe Festival
Pink Venue
Natlick, Mesopotamian God of severed male members, demands nightly blood sacrifice. Inspector Jipp, Scotland Yard's worst detective, struggles with the concept of Sherlock Holmes as a fictional character and Junior Jumble. Worst of all, another idiot theater critic wanders into the set and gets his foot whacked off. They were aiming higher and a bit to the left but missed. Plus, it was a wee willy and a battle axe is so inaccurate. Now Jipp and his assistant must trundle off to club Juana and seek out the mistress of this foul deed. They find her all right, and after a few dollars enter someone's undies, there's the sort of dance that Cassleberry won't allow. This IS the big city of Orlando, and you know how riotous things get on a Saturday afternoon down there in Sin City. Jokes are fast and silly, the nudity is somehow strangely unfulfilling, but there's no heavy going and every one (except the critic) gets a happy ending. They don't get sex, but they do get a happy ending.
Hamlet Desires Medea
By Tom Stoppard, Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein
Art's Sake Studio
Orlando -Fringe Festival - Blue Venue
Shakespear and Dickens share a similar flaw - they got paid by the word. Hamlet is full of pithy sayings and incest, but there's a bunch of clutter as well. Well, out with the junk mail and AOL disks, let's just keep the checks and love letters! Art's Sake takes three short and irreverent plays and gets the audience through a good 2/3rds of a liberal arts education in a single hour. A fifteen-minute Hamlet is about right, even with a 5 minute encore. Every dog has method in it's madness, alas poor Yorick, I last saw him in apartment 2B, next play please.
People paid for an hour, and a hour they shall get. The next segment wraps all that sweaty, sexy abusive southern lust as Blanche and Stella battle over that Kolowski lout, cooling off with a luke warm Budwieser every now and again. There's nothing like a good catfight between women in slips. Now THAT'S great theater!
We're still a bit short on the clock, so let's toss in a little Greek tragedy. Some one took the effort to update (and shorten) that chestnut "The Trojan Women" by Euripides. You remember Euripides - he's the guy in the joke about the tailor and the suit. We get the chorus, we get the disembowelment, and best of all, Deus Ex Machina drops by for a cup of coffee. This is theater for the art burn out.
Thanks for the Mammaries
S.I.N.B.A.D. Theater Company
Orlando Fringe Festival
Pink Venue
Just because you have low self-esteem doesn't mean you can't have fun. Andrea (the zaftig one) and childhood friend Rachel (the ectomorph) bump into each other after Andrea dumps her two timing husband. Andrea could never get up the courage to pick up a guy, and Rachel couldn't get up the courage to say no. Dialog and duet combine with poetry and pathos in a small glimpse into the lives of two lost souls. It's pleasant enough entertainment if the story isn't too close to your own life. As the duo wraps up, reflect that neither ended up with a rug rat, alcohol drowns the pain, and Mr. Right is out there somewhere. It's frog kissing time, ladies. Pucker up.
Uncertain Curtain
Sak Ensemble
Orlando Fringe Festival
Red Venue
It's improv, you must understand, so don't expect anything I say here to apply to the show you visit. We need a career, a hobby, a city, whoa - another career, no rejection in this set, and off we go on a musical journey that no one planned out before the lights went up. Tonight two New York tough guys battle over a girl and whether it's manly to rescue homeless cats. It's not, but the guy playing the cat is cute, even if he coughs up a few hair balls and scratches the stuffing out of the seats in the front row. Improv is a challenge, and adding a strict requirement to match melody and rhyme makes it just a bit harder. This troupe of Sak veterans handles the job handily with only one or two flat spots. Wait till you see the one about the Chiropractor and the Paleontologist...
Bills Family Fun Time
By Bill Larkin
Orlando Fringe Festival
Red Venue
We all keep dirty little secrets in our sock drawer. It's our Mom. No -wait - it's Dad. Or that Aunt Peg and her mustache? Incomprehensible Gramps? Incoherent Grammy? Our evil twin? Oh no, it's US! Bill Larkin, a musician with some scary skills, bops out a big Broadway soundtrack for the people we love to hate but have to love, our kith and kin. Whether it's a paean to the hurried demise of that unwanted twin brother, or Grandma telling us completely fabricated stories about the Venezuelan national anthem and the depth of the snow in 1847, Bill whips up the funniest show in fringe.
Larkin is the sort of piano player that the word "styling" so often becomes attached to. He's so much better than that, and there isn't a Holiday Inn lounge that would put up with his misanthropic views of blood relations. We get a short slide show of Bill growing up with dear Poppa, sort of like that sappy Harry Chapin tune. You know, "Cat's in the Blender". We find out Bill's true feelings for his "womb mate", a not suitable for Hallmark sentiment. Best of all, Bill can rap about his dog like the best of the white bread homeys. After the show, we all voted. Bill is funny, 85 to 16. A landslide.
The Game's Afoot
By Al Arasim and the Baker Street Players
Orlando Fringe Festival
Blue Venue
Seeing something is not the same as observing it. How many stairs to your apartment? What color is the dirt in your yard? How many types of cigarette ash may be distinguished? Sherlock Holmes knows, with the compulsive eye for detail and the hyperactive brain to make something out of all these apparently unrelated factoids. He splits the rent with phlegmatic Dr. Watson, a true friend and stout companion in the trenches of cleaning up after Scotland yard.
With emphasize on origin and relation, Game's Afoot is not so much mystery solved, but characters defined. We learn of Dr. Watson's service in the Afghani wars, Holmes' wanderlust parents, and a struggle to overcome addiction to opiates and nicotine. We hold these two as icons of the detection trade, but what do we really know of them? Game's Afoot is that critical background biography that unveils and motivates the strongest fictional characters in English literature.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
By Martin McDonagh
Directed by Kristian Truelsen
Starring Christine Decker, Ann Hering, Jim Howard, Bill Mitchell
Orlando Theater Project / SCC
Some people are born to poverty and isolation, some people fall into poverty and isolation, and some people have it thrust upon them. Middle-aged Maureen (Hering) finds herself trapped in a mutually abusive relationship with her mother Mag (Decker) and a sadly beautiful West Irish countryside. Mother made sure she never had a man, but now the glimmer of a chance arrives as Pato Dooley (Howard) picks her up at a local party. He may not be the lover of her dreams, but options are limited, and he is a nice enough guy. He heads back to London, with work and insults aplenty, but eventually arranges a chance to go to Boston. He asks Maureen to go with him, and despite mum's best efforts to kill the affair, Maureen almost escapes.
Action revolves around a claustrophobic set, with the two women glued together by a lack of money and alternatives. Dialogue, faithfully rendered with a thick west country accent, is a challenge for actor and audience alike. A helpful glossary included in the program translates "Complan" and "Ceilidh" from Anglo-Gaelic into American. With isolation as intense as these folks experience, any meeting comes out more intense than we are used to. Maureen's dreams of escape dash in the last scene, with no clear reason given for the crash and burn. This is the only flaw in an otherwise humorous and touching story.
Miss Bird is Singing
Becky Fisher & Joe Swanberg
Orlando Fringe Festival
Red Venue
Hit after Hit after Hit! There are tons of good songs out there, sort of wafting around the collective musical unconscience, but no good place to sing them. Tonight's show plucks a dozen from that sea of intellectual property, with bubbly Becky Fischer belting them out. Rich Charron backs her on that honky tonky sounding piano that keeps SAK singing, and hubby Joe Swanberg MC's. There's some Cole Porter, a bit of Bonnie Raitt, even some Sting. Fischer seems made for the Broadway and Amelia Avenue stage, with perky musicality and a mastery of those flirty hand gestures that you associate with the 50's movie bombshells. It's sort of hokey and sort of sexy, all at the same time.
Pinnacle of the show is the title number, Miss Bird Sings. There's a secret sex life of the bland and boring, and even if you wouldn't give Miss B a second look at her dreary desk, she's singing inside. Now, if you're a bit more of an exhibitionist, don't miss Everybody's Girl. She may not be nude, but that's not necessary with that short blue nightie, boa, and Cookie Monster G-string.
With only one principle and a different dress for almost every song, there are more breaks in the action that one would hope for, but Swanburg finds enough oddments to occupy the audience without lapsing into the Eric Idle smarmyness lurking around the corner. It's crisp, it's clean, it's an older music that is about to be rediscovered by the new Bohos. Kiss kiss and nighty night!
Life After Elvis
By Jason Milligan
Orlando Fringe Festival
Pink Venue
America has a lot going for it. For example, when you do your taxes, right down at the bottom where you sign they ask your profession. If you say "Elvis Impersonator", no on will blink an eye or haul you off for inappropriate humor. Whatever Elvis's tax status, we know his spirit drives America's low class demimonde. Some think he's in the witness protection program, not really any more ridiculous than anything else you see in the checkout line. A tad short on scratch, Mom and Dad let out Junior's room whiles he's off at that expensive college place. Elvis agreed to help with the chores, but spends more time on dial-a-porn and impersonating himself. Dad's a bit fed up, but Mom gets into the swing of this Hunka Hunka Mouldering Love. Will Dad find out? Will you see as much of Mom as you ought to? Will Junior retrieve his letter jacket? Can that nervous twitch in the King's left leg ever be cured?
Silly and fun, Life After Elvis supplies a needed bit of silliness with a solid cast. This Elvis (#38,675 on his union card) mumbles competent covers and wears his satin jumpsuit with pride. Dad's a bit over the top, and even if you don't cotton to pop stars of the Eisenhower era, Mom puts on the best show of all. Don't be cruel - drop by and set a spell.
DCO Sells Out
Discount Comedy Outlet
Orlando Fringe Festival
Red Venue
For those of you who have short attention spans, we are about to rock you! The intrepid DCO troupe wanders on stage, lost in the woods while seeking the elusive Bigfoot, and stops for a long-needed break. Four, five, maybe as long as 7 minutes have passed since they last caught their breath. They take this opportunity for a word from their personal sponsors - fat pills, Alcoholic non-dairy product, and maybe a personalized manatee slicer. DCO - why, have they sold out? Abandoned biting social satire for vast fortunes in product endorsement ads? Well, they still do all the bisexual penis jokes, so they might not even be allowed on UPN. And hey, even I keep hoping someone will make me a percentage offer. These guys get one from Satan himself. Will Lucifer deliver? Or just leave them in standup hell at a club in Tampa?
There are strengths and weaknesses here, with the shorter bits the strongest. Martha Stewart passes on advice on wreath-making and synthesizing Whack from common household chemicals. Wrestlers threaten to tease each others' hair. Personal cannibal trophies. All good stuff. The longer sketches wander a bit, with the Welcome Wagon visiting Cap'n Ahab rambling through some bizarre territory with no clear end in sight, even when the end finally arrives. A TV (that's television in this case) Political Fashion panel matching Mayor Normal against the CHUD, er, "Sewer Dwelling Americans" in a political debate was a little more focused, with some nice brick to the head and incumbent gut munching.
In the end, Satan comes to collect his crew, shuffling them off to the bus bound for Tampa. Due to some fine print on the Fringe button the audience had to go along. At least there's company.
Circus Peep Show Rejects
Poisoned Pixie Cup Productions
Orlando Fringe Festival
Pink Venue
If there are a million stories in the naked Big Top, most of them have landed here in a jumble. Two young ladies present a tangled story of adultery and abandonment, career advancement and fine cuisine, and a dozen other subplots with minimum props, costumes, and people. All of today's characters are played by 2 actresses, with different personalities evoked with a mere change in dialect. The ring mistress asks an aspiring one-eyed tightrope walker and caricaturist to paint a picture of her boy friend for his birthday, while an abandoned child seeks her mother, the fried-dough guy changes girl friends, and a few other characters wander though the stage space.
With little to clue the audience in as to who is who at any given time, the multiple vignettes quickly muddy to a confused set of funny voices. I lost track of who was who within 10 minutes, and there were never enough clues to reset my character counter. Near the end, our two intrepid but overextended actresses tried to keep perhaps four characters onstage simultaneously, with disastrous effect. Two people can make stage magic, and two people can make several characters, but without more substantive hooks for the audience to grab, all that results is theatrical chaos. A program would have helped, but fewer characters and threads would have been even clearer.
Loud
Book & Lyric by Todd Kimbro
Orlando Fringe Festival
Orange Venue
Let's see - triangle, quadrilateral, pentagram - this is a love pentagram. Mother Linda (Julia Granacki) loves Father Payne (Ed Campbell), even though they only schtupp three times a year. They loved each other once, anyway, with Parker (Kimbro) as living proof. Parker's at the awkward age when hormones rage against his machine and no one inquired if he would prefer birth. Debby briefly falls for Parker, taking pity on him in the liquor store parking lot and buying him a twelver of succulent Bud Lite. No car, no ID, hey maybe he']s JB! Can't mess with that, safely. Dump him and let's check the 'net for a real man. Dad's got an eye for Ray (Jeff Forte) at the factory, but Ray's not that type. He'd rather woo Debby electronically, even though they live next door. Resolution? Let's blow the whole thing sky high!
Kimbro's modern operetta holds a clever and tight plot, yet suffers from weak singing and possibly bad acoustics. Aside from Linda's touching "Third Person", many of the songs sound muddy. The problem grows as the number of singers increases. An excellent synopsis keeps you current, and Kimbro's electronica soundtrack compliments the action, but isn't really hummable. There's promise in these chords, and a cleaner vocal arrangement could send this show on its way.
A Time To Go Walking
Written by Peter McGarry
Eyewitness Theater Company (Ireland)
Orlando Fringe Festival
Old Celts don't die. They walk away, to the West, never to return. And they don't pack an overnight kit. They give away their worldly possessions, strip to the buff, and hike it. Some would call it destiny. Today, we call it abandonment. Dicky Mick Dicky feels the call, even at a hale three-score and two. Always the dreamer, he puts off fixing the roof and digging the spuds to consult the ancient Gods. Loyal wife Katie walks the five miles into town, cleaning the hotel for pin money, but Dicky plans to put a motor on her bike so she can ride. Soon. With 30 years under the belt, lust sublimates to nagging, love to habit, jealousy to comedy. Nail clippings, failed business plans, snoring, and what the hell are we still doing together? Well, outside of the sad fact there are few other options, two are better than one for mending socks and fixing light bulbs and staying warm against the cold storm winds.
Dicky looks that long cold walk square in the eye, and finds a reasonable excuse to stay home tonight. It's Katie who departs first, with a cough that not even the ancient Celtic herb can cure. Dicky misses her, misses her as only tempered true love can miss. Avoiding that long walk, he receives a final visit by Kate. No data on the afterlife passes her lips, except to say, "The world needs dreamers. Take that walk, Dicky. Go now." Sound advice, and better late than never.
God of Vengeance
Written by Sholem Asch
Adapted by Stephen Fife
The Center Players
Orlando Fringe Festival
How to measure one's status, status with God and status with one's fellow Jew? God is clear on a few things - sin and salvation, holy writ and honoring the Torah. Where you stand against one''s fellow, that's more difficult. Yankel (Shelly Ackerman) runs a nice, profitable business. He runs a house, a house as in "of ill repute". He hopes to keep daughter Rivkele (Christine Morales) pure and honorable, never letting her know what goes on downstairs, and perhaps marry her off to a nice young rabbi. He buys a Torah scroll, laboriously copied letter by letter, astoundingly expensive and astoundingly holy, which might just do the trick. Were Rivkele to only avoid her friend Manke (Amanda Schlachter) from downstairs! Her friendship long ago passed from innocent desire to physical lust, threating her chances as a good Jewish wife. Slimy Shloyme (Mike Mayhall) has plans of snatching Manke and the other girls to start his own house, and if only pure, innocent Rivkele could come along... He might even make Hindl (Jennifer Smith) an honest woman, if that would help.
Love and money are no match for honor and appearance, and Rivkele's departure disgraces Yankel and his new Torah. If you drop the Torah on the ground, the whole community must fast for 40 days. If the owner is a Lesbian.. who knows what would happen? It's got to be an even bigger schmertz im dem tokhes. Not good, certainly.
Originally written 100 years ago, this play was booted off the New York stage for both strong sexual content and a challenge to the deepest tenets of Judaism. The relation between God and man is just as important as the relation between father and daughter, employer and employee, respectability and disgrace. Women are slapped around, which shocks us today, while respectability and God's very existence is challenged, which shocked our forbearers. Today we recognize the disgrace of homosexuality, but please don't ignore the disgrace of apostasy. Both will damn you, and both skate to the every abyss of damnation in tonight's show.
Salome Written by Oscar Wilde
Directed by Laura-Lea Oliver
Cerulean Group
Orlando Fringe Festival -Orange Venue
Herod's in a box. A teeny, tiny box. One wall is battle-axe wife Herodias (Gloria Duggan), snatched from his brother, God only knows why. Another wall is anchored in far off Rome, which deigns him a kingship so long as he cooperates and keeps the taxes rolling in. Wall 3 is his lust-bunny half-daughter Salome, nudge nudge. The biggest wall hangs from high heaven, in the form of that annoying prophet Jokanaan the Baptist. Jokanaan may well work for Jehovah almighty, and Herod is in no good position to push THAT wall too hard. After all, Herod (Stephen Jones) is a good Jew. Salome, the classic spoiled little princess, thinks Jokanaan is sexy in a weekend slumming sort of way. Man of God that he is, Jokanaan tells her to get stuffed, you little daughter of the whore of Babylon. Trying to impress the Roman ambassador and get a cheap thrill for himself, Herod convinces icy Salome to do the dance of the 7 veils. Ever the spurned woman, she'll not settle for a few shekel notes in her g-string, she wants a bigger tip -Jokanaan's head on the silver platter. Oooh, not what Herod had in mind, even though all seven veils fall in quick succession. Still, Herodias thinks it's a good idea, and Herod is basically a wuss, so off that pesky head goes. Herod is not happy. Rome couldn't care less. God remains silent.
The flowery language of Wilde and Jokanaan's ranting present a challenging counterpoint to the modern listener. Rather than the direct linear motion of the modern pen, Wilde wends around the language, repeating motifs and motivations as in the ancient literary mode. Jones' antsy Herod remind one of an uncomfortable James T. Kirk hoping someone will beam him out of this bet gone bad. Icy Salome (Julia Granacki) plays his inverse as she stares the audience down and satisfies her mother's lust. When she trades modesty for the vengeance of spurned lust, everyone but Herod stares with drool running down their chin. Did she do it for mommy? Of course not. She did just what mommy would have, had she the breasts.
The Ballad of Reading Goal
Written by Oscar Wilde
Adapted by Alan Bruun and Jason Moyer
Mad Cow Theater
Orlando Fringe - Blue Venue
Who says jail isn't a barrel of yucks? Cable TV, weight machines, 3 squares a day... or cold dripping walls, cold chains around one's ankles, a desperation of lost souls, souls who ignored the rules of civilized men, and now have lost not only their freedom but the last remnants of any civilized society. Having broken the rules, they themselves must be broken. A single match, blood on their hands, their heads, their hearts, the moaning of dark solitary souls, lost souls, souls condemned to a week or a year or a life of torment - torment stemming from the torment they passed on fellow man.
The flower of Victorian England, sentenced to 3 years hard labor mostly for the crime of hubris, Wilde sends us the haunting record of a life lost inside. As Wilde ponders his fall from grace, others fall faster and farther, for killing what they love to the final punishment, falling from the gallows to the gaping hole in the prison yard, the unmarked, unnoticed, unholy grave. This poem, long and florid, here reappears as the shadow of humans stripped of dignity, stripped of face, of name, of identity, leaving only the moans of the jailed. Bruun's adaptation syncopates the flow of rhythm, leaving only the lost world of an individual trapped in a universe of society's making. Society made it, but the prisoner chose to enter it. Join them for an hour. You can leave, but they must remain.
Trailer Trash Tabloid
Wanzie & Doug
Orlando Fringe Festival
Green Venue
There are two general classes of drag queens. One class looks like a guy in a dress, and the other makes you say "Oooh - That's a GUY?" Wanzie and Doug are in that first class, and that's the most interesting class, and the funniest. There's a little mystery on Velvetta Drive, what with Frank Falkenburg mysteriously shot while an F5 tornado delivers God's eternal message - "I HATE trailer parks". We'll solve this mystery the American Way - an expose on tabloid TV. One by one, the friends and enemies of Frank come on stage and tell their pathetically hysterical stories. Mostly in drag, but dressed even worse, they present hilarious duets of white trash jokes, sexual innuendo and flamingo symbolism. You'll hear just how Delilah Falkenburg survived the storm by hiding in an acoustically perfect Weber smoker and eating charcoal briquettes, and if Maxine MacIntyre ever got picked up by the fuzz.
One of the funniest shows at the Fringe, Trailer Trash Tabloid shows that not every flamer puts on silly little plays JUST so they can dress like a woman in public and get a laugh. Hey, they could dress in Jeans and an Arrow shirt and still get a laugh.
Blood Lake
Pickett & Spiller Productions
Orlando Fringe Festival
Orange Venue
The only thing worse than being stuck on Blood Lake III is trying to live down your work on Blood Lake II. Make it really scary now - you're not just in a bad film, you're in a musical ABOUT that bad film. Horror Star Billy Cross (Jim Mundy) has the improbable hit "Heavy Rotation" creeping up to number 3 on the charts, but semi-evil producer Jack Dare (Darryl Picket) holds him by the contractual short hairs. Dare's with his leading lady Vanessa Winter (Amy Wilkins), who struggles to reconcile with her mother Gloria (Ellen Cowley MacLeish). Mom suffers from a mysterious disease, possibly contracted from starring in the original Blood Lake. Pneumatic reporter Samantha Stone (Debbie Sussman) hangs around documenting the creative process for E!, and prodding the plot along when it gets lost. Billy eventually convinces Dare to knife Vanessa, then knife Billy, and finally shoot himself. Dare had considered knifing himself, but didn't want to be stuck in a rut.
Mixed talents, a zillion blackouts, and the constant use of cellphones as plot devices make Blood Lake into a sort of Mud Lake. Conway-MacLeish's torch rendition of "It Should Have Been" is the musical highlight, with Mundy's "Heavy Rotation" more of a cold reading than a hot pop tune. Acting fire came from Vanessa and Gloria's mis-aligned attempts at reconciliation, and Dare's mistrust of Vanessa leading to a tragic results. There's a story here, lost in the made for TV pacing, and there might even be a musical with some stronger voices. But lose "Heavy Rotation" - the audience was as embarrassed listening to it as Billy was singing it.
No Laughing Matter: Back From the Dead!
Performance Space Orlando
"Hey - you got Sketch in my Improv!" "No way, you got Improv all over my Sketch!" This ever happen to you? Well, the two can get on, as long as they both agree to play nice, keep a colon in the title, and not throw spit wads at one another. A taxman's filled the family-packed PSO, with top comedy honors going to the Urinal Segment. Two actors on prescription strength Improv each creating a line starting with letters ranging from A to Z, describing the all-too-common situation of two guys duking it out for dibs in the john. Zoinks, it was funny, and you girls will learn why guys don't go together. And why they check their fly AFTER they leave.
As sketches go, the Boys in the Barber Shop played a long game of slightly mis-heard words, showing the amazing relations that exist between Jackie Gleason, Yogi bear and that fuzz butt Jedi master, whose name eludes me at the moment. Are there subliminal messages imbedded here? Boy, I hope so. The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse thought so, and one of them was already dead.
Other noteworthy events were the Horrors Film Scene repeated as the "Brady Bunch Theme", and a Dr. Suess children's tale as an Opera. The great thing Opera version? It was at least as coherent as a Real Opera, the plot made sense, and it was sung in English. Speaking of singing, Sound of Music achieved full metal deconstruction by a crack team of Austrian Engineers. I think they were crack engineers, anyway, they had vu graphs and slide rules. Does this make sense? No need to - after all, its a show tune! Clever sketch, crisp improv, and let's hope these fellows Rise from the Dead again soon. After all, not just anyone can get a laugh from the word "Pudenda".
How to Eat Like a Child
Act III Acting Studio
Orlando Fringe Festival
Orange Venue
Ah, the innocence of youth - torturing you sister, pestering mom for a dog, sneaking turnips into the trash uneaten, and trying to get your sister to puke in the car. We hate it when our kids do it, even more so when someone else's kids do it in public, but when you're 8, what else it there? Lust? Cocaine? Pokemon? Day trading? Of course not. It's harassing the others trapped in your world, or nothing.
Thirteen bouncing 13 year-olds sang, mined and acted the foibles of childhood. A 13 year-old acting as an 8 year-old isn't that big a stretch (Hollywood uses 18 year-olds to portray 8 year-olds), but these youngsters can step outside their recent experience and show us old folks a funny and enjoyable Family Circus view of childhood. The gory details, the running to 3 soccer practices a night, the $200 designer sneakers, the casual use of firearms in the classroom, that all can wait. This is the fun childhood. Dance along to the "Torturing Your Sister Tango", and relive someone else's childhood.
An Evening at the Grand Guignol
Siren Productions
Orlando Fringe Festival
Blue Venue
Ah, zee Franch! It's not enough for them to produce Moliere and Racine, they must balance the high art with the low art, hence Le Grand Guignol. With macabre stories pulled from the tabloid of the day, Guignol re-enacts them, using gallons of carefully-designed fake blood. Tonight's show begins with the secret desire of all actors - the ability to select the critics in the audience, humiliate them, knife them, then throw their sorry butts out in the alley. God knows it happens to me ALL THE TIME. I will admit, the guy had it coming. Rather than sit still and do his job, he entered into an argument face to face with the sort of big scary guy you know not to mess with at bike week. Served him right.
On to the main event - torture, blood and the HMO experience. A new patient, patient 13, has arrived at the Shadwell Clinic. Dr. Sortie and Big Nurse want to cure him from the madness induced by a failed abortion on his girl friend, an abortion that killed her as well as the child. We have no time for remorse or moralizing, but we do have time for some bloody Mototool surgery and flensing a mad woman. And a big, juicy blood zit. Yummy.
Rough and shocking, no one recommends this for children. Children would, of course, be fascinated by it, and that's why we shouldn't let them see it. Is the blood and gore necessary to the plot? Of course. It IS the plot. And you'll love it. Go for a pizza right after.
Twilight at Montecello
Directed by Michael Carleton
Written by and Starring J.D. Sutton
UCF Shakespeare / Playlab series
America was founded by Mythic Heroes, just like every great land. The pay is low, hours long, but you get your face on the pocket change, and that's something. Tom Jefferson, retired to his mountaintop country retreat, gently tolerates the audience tonight, as he chats about flowers, the plight of the Negro, the tabloid press, and the joys of writing for public comment. With a resume as comprehensive as his (did some pro bono work for the revolutionary congress, Ambassador, inventor, founded a University, even did that presidential thing), complete disclosure is out of the question. What we do cover in this rough draft of a one-man play shows Jefferson as a concerned liberal in the best sense of the word, and a very human person. Better laws, better governance, loss of his wife and children, and agony for the souls he inherits drove him, and you will worry about these as well. He did have slaves, but it turns out you couldn't just free them in 1820 - you'd have to send them to Illinois territory, which was worse than keeping them on the cotton field.
While the play as presented is still a work in progress, it shows great promise as a low key yet hugely entertaining evening spent with a man (Sutton) who knows and loves Jefferson as few do. While the topics covered sound heavy and polemic, the sense of the evening is time well spent with a funny and lovable uncle. The struggles Jefferson faced are the same struggles any public figure faces today. The hot topics of 1820 are still hot today, and not all that much has changed in 200 years. Well, one thing has. Our sentences are much shorter. That's my 5 cents worth.
Carl F Gauze is a wealthy but reclusive student of the arts, semi-retired from a stellar career as an insurance calendar salesman. His real fortune derives from his great grandfather, Herman S. Gauze, who invented the sterile surgical dressing in Zurich shortly before the First World War. Because of Switzerland's neutrality and the obvious humanitarian uses of this bandage during the tragedy, he amassed a vast fortune selling the dressing to both sides. He's recently been looking at bikes, and can't decide between a Harley Fat Boy or a Vespa. Decisions, decisions...
